“The Hideout is and always has been more than the physical place,” says Roy Janik, the co-owner and artistic director of the venerable improv theater. “But we have been there for 26 years, so it's a big change.”
The change he’s referring to is the Hideout’s upcoming change of location – after more than a quarter of a century at its Congress Avenue locale, a change in their building’s ownership means that the folks of the Hideout will have to find a new venue soon. But Janik and the rest of the Hideout crew is staying positive about the transition.
“The announcement that we're moving really put a perspective in place for us about what the Hideout is,” says longtime performer and head of marketing Courtney Hopkin. “It being the community, it being the shows, the improv, the performances, the classes, and not the place. We did, you know, for the entire time we were there, refer to the building as ‘The Hideout.’ And moving means that we – In a good way – need to reassess what we think the Hideout is. And the Hideout is more than a building.”
Before they leave the space, though, the Hideout will present their annual 48 Hour Improv Marathon one last time at their current location.
“It's exactly what it sounds like: a bad idea,” Janik says. “But the best idea. Some of our best ideas are our worst ideas. Does that make sense? Every year, the marathon is a fundraiser, and normally it's a fundraiser for our youth program and our Building Connections program. But this year, because we're moving… it's part of a more general fundraising effort and so it's raising money for our relocation fund.”
As the name implies, the 48 Hour Improv Marathon is a two-day nonstop marathon of improv performances. “There are eight performers that do the entire thing,” Janik explains, “but every hour is a completely different improv show. So we might have a group that does improvised Shakespeare come in one hour and they'll join the eight people that perform the entire time and be like, hey, we're doing Shakespeare and the eight people will be like, what? Oh, OK. And then we do that for an hour and then we come back, and now it's like Whose Line is it Anyway-style games and then the next [hour] it's a musical. So those eight people do the entire thing, but over the course of the weekend there are hundreds of other performers that come through and play with them, basically.”
Hopkin and Janik have both been in the core eight in the past, performing in the entirety of the marathon. This year, Hopkin will perform off and on throughout the weekend, but Janik will be onstage for the duration. “Courtney did it last year,” Janik says. “The last time I did the 48 hour improv marathon was when it was only 43 hours. We started a long time ago at 40 hours, and we added 1 hour each year. And so we got to 48 and I said, ‘we can't add any more hours. This is unhealthy.’ And I didn't think I would ever do it again, but now that it's our last few months at the downtown location, I was like, this kind of seems like the perfect way to say goodbye to a place that I've spent the past few decades at, you know? So, 48 hours. And it already makes you emotional staying up for 48 hours, but I expect that this was an emotional mistake on my part.”
Is there any time for the performers to catch a break (or a nap) during those two days? “In between shows you can,” Hopkin says, “but it definitely comes at a price. You get a little taste of that sweet rest, and then you don't want to go back. And you wake up and you are angry.”
“Yeah, [the break between shows is] really only 10 minutes,” Janik agrees, “and I think science says like 20 minutes is the sweet spot for a short nap, so it is not a good length of time. There is one show that is a competition show that we do every weekend at the Hideout called Maestro, and we do it in the marathon too, and it's a two-hour block. And it's everyone's favorite show because there's a chance you might do poorly and get eliminated early, and then you have like an hour to sleep. But most of the time the marathoners do really well and make it all the way to the end.”
Hopkin says things can get weird as the hours wear on. “You genuinely hallucinate,” she says. “It is a terrible idea, but you get… you reach a sort of point where you are having realizations about the way you perform, about who you perform with, about how you perform with other people, how generous you can be, how snippy you can be. And, you know, there's a lot of personal breakthroughs that you have when you are so tired and you've been sort of being on for people for that long. And you… make a lot of breakthroughs.”
“Yeah, one of the goals with improv is trying to strip away those barriers that get between you and… your impulse and your creativity,” Janik says. “And once you are sleep deprived, those barriers go away because they have to. And yeah, I think it levels up anyone who does it.”
